About
Mission Team
Activities
Pedagogy Events
Projects
Pocket OpeRA
medias fr
Menu

home  >  events  >  subverting sonic conventions: the languages and non-languages of clowns

Subverting Sonic Conventions: The Languages and Non-languages of Clowns

From February 5 to February 7, 2026

Montreal

This conference will bring together scholars, artists, and practitioners to reflect on the languages and non-languages of clowns and their relationship to the sound world of clowning. The conference will occur in conjunction with the world premiere of Ana Sokolović’s opera Clown(s), presented by the Opéra de Montréal. Inspired by Masques et bouffons by Maurice Sand (1859), Clown(s) honours the history of clowns through a clown’s life cycle, from infancy and childhood through old age. Structured in seven non-narrative tableaux, the opera engages with different artforms—puppetry, magie nouvelle (new magic), circus arts, shadow play, and pantomime—and takes inspiration from the performances of Dario Fo and the films of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Jacques Tati, and Federico Fellini.  

The unconventional languages of clowns—invented languages, the replacement of words by gestures, and other forms of language that break with convention are often cited as a central aspect of their subversive role. Clowns can take on many forms: circus performer, sad clown, court jester, trickster, sacred clown, chou (Beijing opera), commedia dell’arte character, protagonist of slapstick cinema, stand-up comic, etc. What appears to connect them is their marginality, their non-conformity, their ability to break conventions and name taboos. Both included in and excluded from dominant discourse, clowns embody the indissociable nature of power and resistance. 

In this context, and with a view to addressing the gaps identified in current scholarly and artistic discourse, the symposium is organized into three thematic days, each combining workshops, panels, roundtables, lectures, and performances. The detailed program for the three days is presented below.

Thursday 5 February 2026 Overview: 9:30 AM opening remarks · 9:45 AM workshop · 11:00 AM panel · 1:30 PM lecture · 2:00 PM panel · 3:15 PM lecture-concert · 6:30 PM pre-opera
09:30 AM
Opening Remarks (Ana Sokolović et Zoey Cochran)
09:45 AM
Workshop Circus Clowns: History and Creation Les Foutoukours (Les Foutoukours)
10:45 AM
Break
11:00 AM Panel : Social Impact of Clowns
How to Change the World: A Practical Guide for Dreamers and Fools Johanna Skibsrud (University of Arizona)
Biography
Johanna Skibsrud is the author of four collections of poetry, three novels including the Scotiabank Giller Prize-winning novel, The Sentimentalists - and three nonfiction titles, including The Nothing That Is and Fool: A Study in Literature and Practice. A Professor of English Literature at the University of Arizona and a college member of the Royal Society of Canada, Johanna lives in Tucson, Arizona, and Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Abstract
In How to Change the World: A Practical Guide for Dreamers and Fools, I drew on personal experience in clown classes in France and the USA to both challenge and extend the correlation suggested by Theodor Adorno between thinking and clowning. The book considers a diverse range of literary and theoretical sources and refers to a varied cast of literary and historical clowns and fools with the aim of elaborating fresh approaches to critical thought and creative process, and a new set of pedagogical tools. The proposed paper charts the development of a general education course at the University of Arizona titled “How to Change the World: A Study in Literature and Practice,” slated for Spring 2026. The course has been specifically designed to challenge students to think and then to act out the connections between the non- or sur-languages employed by poets, writers, and performers, and the language of policy makers. By engaging with texts ranging from Aesop’s Fables and Confucius’s Analects to Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass and Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (all texts that have had a specific and direct impact on regulation and policy), as well as with a range of experiential prompts for creative performance and community engagement, students will both investigate and enact the relationship between the "non-language" of the imaginative impossible and its practical applications and effects. Both the course and the analytical work that explores its process will prompt an expanded sense of the role of the fool, and foolishness, in 21st century culture and a way of reimagining the border between personal and collective responsibility.
Communiquer avec les aînés autrement : Secrets du clown thérapeutique Melissa Holland et Michèle Sirois (Fondation Dr. Clown)
Biographys
Melissa Holland est cofondatrice et codirectrice artistique de la Fondation Dr Clown, basée à Montréal, au Canada. Elle travaille régulièrement comme clown à l’hôpital avec des enfants et des personnes âgées. Elle œuvre également au développement et à la promotion de l’organisme, ainsi qu’à la formation et à la recherche. Elle est aussi membre du conseil d’administration de NAFHCO (North American Federation of Healthcare Clown Organizations).

Avant d’obtenir son baccalauréat en théâtre du Conservatoire d’art dramatique de Québec, Michèle Sirois a été infirmière. Comédienne, elle complète une formation en jeu clownesque. Pendant plus de 16 ans, elle fait partie des clowns thérapeutiques de la Fondation Dr Clown. Aujourd’hui, elle est formatrice et conférencière. Elle a publié Clowns d’hôpitaux, c’est du sérieux, ainsi que deux livres pour les 6–8 ans et l’ouvrage Vieillir en santé c’est possible.
Abstract
Fondation Dr. Clown a pour mission d’améliorer le bien-être et la qualité de vie du plus grand nombre. Les clowns thérapeutiques créent des liens de joie, de légèreté et de complicité qui favorisent la résilience en milieux de la santé et de l’éducation. La présentation aborde notamment les besoins des personnes âgées, la mémoire émotionnelle, les valeurs du clown et des techniques non verbales transférables au personnel soignant et aux proches.
12:00 AM
Lunch
01:30 PM
Conférence Murmurs, sighs, and groans: the emergent voice of a Clown (Matthew-Robin Nye)
02:00 PM Panel : Clowns et spiritualité
“A Chalice in One Hand and a Machete in the Other”: The Roman Catholic Clown Mass and Twenty-First Century Liturgical Music Discourse Alanna Tierno (Shenandoah University)
Biographys
Alanna Tierno teaches music history and serves in the Global Engagement office at Shenandoah University (Winchester, USA). She received her PhD in musicology from Case Western Reserve University. Her book, The Polyphonic Mass in Early Lutheran Central Europe, was published by Boydell and Brewer Press this past autumn. Her publications have appeared in Early Music History, Journal of the Alamire Foundation, Notes, Nota Bene, and several published conference proceedings. She is currently working on a second monograph on Roman Catholic liturgical music since 1990. Alanna is the recipient of research fellowships from Fulbright and the Herzog August Bibliothek, as well as FLAS language fellowships in Slovak and Czech.
Abstract
As the Roman Catholic Church of the 1970s attempted to interpret and execute the Second Vatican Council’s drastic liturgical reforms, a phenomenon known as the “Clown Mass” appeared primarily in the United States. Embracing the council’s directives on “active participation” of the congregation and diverse cultural expressions within the liturgy, a Clown Mass included liturgical ministers dressed in clown makeup and/or costumes. Sometimes only the ordained clergy (priests and deacons) dressed as clowns; in other instances, lay ministers such as lectors and musicians also donned clown garb and makeup. Although the Clown Mass never became a widespread practice in Roman Catholicism, the 1985 Catholic Bishops’ Committee on the Liturgy condemned clown costuming during Catholic liturgies. In this paper, I argue that with the associated curiosity and shock value, the use of the Clown Mass in current church music debates enhances their polemical nature and provides a reductionist portrayal of post-Vatican II liturgical music in both theory and practice.
The Clown Mass, which has received scant scholarly attention, reemerged in twenty-first century publications and internet discussions surrounding the Roman Catholic liturgy and its music. Proponents of a “traditional” liturgical music aesthetic (the use of Gregorian chant, the Latin language, etc.) point to these isolated Masses involving clowns as evidence that the Vatican II liturgical reforms are flawed and a return to older ritual practices is necessary. In earlier practice as well as current theoretical discourse, the Clown Mass is associated with “modern” or “contemporary” church music that resembles 1970s folk styles and features guitars and simplistic, repetitive texts. In a 2016 article published on the Catholic satire website Eye of the Tiber, a fictional priest describes seeing “creepy clowns” processing into the church while a calliope organ played Marty Haugen’s “All Are Welcome,” a composer and hymn commonly criticized by those who prefer older sacred music styles, with one clown holding both a chalice and a machete. Although fictional, this account encapsulates current attitudes toward both the integration of clowns into the Mass and the styles of Roman Catholic liturgical music that developed after the Second Vatican Council.
Chileya cha Mukanda: The Soundscape of a Jester in Zambian Luvale Initiation Ceremonies Jason Winikoff (University of British Columbia)
Biographys
Jason Winikoff is a Ph.D. candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of British Columbia. He is a scholar of timbre, rhythm, percussion, Luvale sonic culture, and jazz. His doctoral dissertation examines the role of timbre within Zambian Luvale spirit manifestation. Winikoff’s work has been funded by the American Philosophical Society, the UBC Public Scholars Initiative, and the ACTOR Project. His research and reviews have been published in Music & Science, Analytical Approaches to World Music, and Ethnomusicology. He also recorded and wrote the liner notes for an album of Zambian music released by the International Library of African Music. Winikoff is a proud partner of the Likumbi Lya Mize Cultural Association – an organization that protects, promotes, and preserves Luvale culture in Zambia. Winikoff is a humble student of Kapalu Lizambo, Josephine Sombo Muzala Chipango, William Vunda, and Douglas Mwila. Outside of academia, he is an active jazz drummer and percussionist.

In a Luvale village in Zambia, a group of mothers ululate as a masked figure approaches. The women have not seen their sons since they enrolled in the mukanda male initiation school. The boys have been in a secluded bush camp for months undergoing circumcision, learning esoteric cultural secrets, and transitioning into adult members of society. Although they are proud of their children for taking this major step, the mothers miss their sons and yearn for their return to the village. But as the masked figure approaches – an ancestral spirit known as a likishi – the sorrow momentarily takes a backseat to joy. A likishi visit to a village is always a special occasion, but the appearance of this particular ancestor is an especially welcomed sight. The women are now in the presence of Chileya cha Mukanda (the fool of the initiation school) and are ready to laugh. Chileya distracts and entertains the worried mothers with his clownish antics. He tells crude jokes, mocks spectators, imitates feminine mannerisms, dances, and sings. About a half hour later, the jester moves on to the next group of villagers in need of respite before eventually returning to the mukanda where he will cheer up the boys struggling with homesickness and other challenges endemic to initiation.
In this presentation, I analyze the soundscape of Chileya’s performances. To accomplish this, I focus on the likishi’s vocality, audience interactions, and the music that accompanies his dances. Vocality, as discussed by Meizel (2011), encompasses words spoken, how they are uttered, and the cultural context within which vocalizing and listening occur. My examination of Chileya’s vocality emphasizes vocal timbre and they ways it is described (Feld et al., 2004; Wallmark 2019). To investigate the contributions of the audience to Chileya’s soundscape, I discuss how potential participants (Turino 2008) tacitly orchestrate (Winikoff 2024) events. Indeed, the line between spectator and performer is blurred in this “total theatre” (Euba 1988). Finally, my analysis of three items of dance music repertoire demonstrates the vital role of percussion to these soundscapes and their ability to link Chileya to specific types of humans.
Abstract
In a Luvale village in Zambia, a group of mothers ululate as a masked figure approaches. The women have not seen their sons since they enrolled in the mukanda male initiation school. The boys have been in a secluded bush camp for months undergoing circumcision, learning esoteric cultural secrets, and transitioning into adult members of society. Although they are proud of their children for taking this major step, the mothers miss their sons and yearn for their return to the village. But as the masked figure approaches – an ancestral spirit known as a likishi – the sorrow momentarily takes a backseat to joy. A likishi visit to a village is always a special occasion, but the appearance of this particular ancestor is an especially welcomed sight. The women are now in the presence of Chileya cha Mukanda (the fool of the initiation school) and are ready to laugh. Chileya distracts and entertains the worried mothers with his clownish antics. He tells crude jokes, mocks spectators, imitates feminine mannerisms, dances, and sings. About a half hour later, the jester moves on to the next group of villagers in need of respite before eventually returning to the mukanda where he will cheer up the boys struggling with homesickness and other challenges endemic to initiation. -----In this presentation, I analyze the soundscape of Chileya’s performances. To accomplish this, I focus on the likishi’s vocality, audience interactions, and the music that accompanies his dances. Vocality, as discussed by Meizel (2011), encompasses words spoken, how they are uttered, and the cultural context within which vocalizing and listening occur. My examination of Chileya’s vocality emphasizes vocal timbre and they ways it is described (Feld et al., 2004; Wallmark 2019). To investigate the contributions of the audience to Chileya’s soundscape, I discuss how potential participants (Turino 2008) tacitly orchestrate (Winikoff 2024) events. Indeed, the line between spectator and performer is blurred in this “total theatre” (Euba 1988). Finally, my analysis of three items of dance music repertoire demonstrates the vital role of percussion to these soundscapes and their ability to link Chileya to specific types of humans.
03:00 PM
Break
03:15 PM
Lecture-recital A Very Conventional Recital Lauren Steinmann
Biographys
Lauren Steinmann(she/her) has loved to sing from a very young age, this passion grew into a lifetime of musical adventures. Lauren grew up doing lots of musical theater along with many other theater ventures. Her love of music began when she started singing in a children’s choir at the age of 9. From there she performed in many musicals such as; Into the woods, Little Mermaid, Jesus Christ Superstar, and many more. Her most recent performance was a self produced and directed clown show called Clown Funk in which she fused clowning with the world of funk music. She is a recent graduate from the University of Victoria in the voice department. Lauren has plans to continue her passions in performance by working to master both her acting and singing abilities in hopes of pursuing a career as a clown, musician and artist.
Abstract
This show was originally done as a graduation recital for Lauren Steinmann’s undergraduate studies and has been adapted into a 30 minute piece featuring Scabbadeemee the clown, a pianist and the stage manager. The recital explores the conventions of a classical voice recital and how these conventions can feel restrictive. In this piece, Lauren Steinmann is presenting a very conventional classical recital, but seems to have misplaced her clown Scabbadeemee. With the help of her stage manager, they navigate trying to locate Scabba throughout the show while trying to mask her presence to the audience. Scabba continually sneaks onstage and sings many silly songs that are not so conventional. Scabba eventually is found onstage by the stage manager but refuses to leave the stage and has a very melodramatic breakdown encompassing her feelings around having to be so serious all the time and how nobody wants her around. This recital explores how the inner child is often pushed aside in classical spaces. In these spaces we are often told to be serious and do everything by the book. What happens when the inner child gets loose in the classical world where play isn’t very welcome? Within this the performer experiences how being in clown can change her sound and perhaps even open it up to access sound that may otherwise be trapped by the confines of trying to create a “perfect” sound.
03:45 PM
Q&A Session « Everything you’ve always wanted to know about clowns » (Les Foutoukours)
04:45 PM
Break
06:30 PM
Pre-opea Clown(s) (Ana Sokolović et Mariella Pandolfi)
Friday 6 February 2026 Overview: 9:00 AM panel · 10:45 AM panel · 1:30 PM panel · 3:15 PM performance · 4:00 PM keynote · 5:00 PM reception · 7:30 PM Stellar
09:00 AM Panel : Panel Clowns in Mainstream Arts
A Modern Commedia dell’arte: The Critical Reception of Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos (1916) and its Interwar Influence Anne Monique Pace (University of Chicago)
Biographys
Anne Monique Pace is a PhD candidate in Music History and Theory at the University of Chicago. She received her BA in 2017 from Columbia University, where she studied Music, English Literature, and Creative Writing with an emphasis on constructions of gender, race, and sexuality in performance. Her dissertation will focus on commedia dell’arte figures in theater, opera, and ballet at the turn of the 20th century, probing the intersections of clowns/clowning and changing conceptions of the human subject. Other active areas of research include music and politics, affect, embodiment, and the performance of identity in a variety of theatrical traditions. She has performance training in classical voice, commedia dell’arte, and Argentine tango.
Abstract
This paper argues that the commedia dell’arte intervention in Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos (rev. 1916) staged political and aesthetic tensions that came to a head during the First World War. In it, I tackle Ariadne’s contested position in the modernist repertoire of the early twentieth century through the lens of highly critical assessments of Strauss’s operatic output by contemporaries such as Ferruccio Busoni, Edward J. Dent, Paul Bekker, and Stefan Zweig alongside an analysis of the opera’s unique presentation of commedia dell’arte figures.

Ariadne’s operatic portrayal of the commedia zanni Harlequin, Scaramuccio, Truffaldino, Brighella, and the incandescent Zerbinetta speaks to contemporaneous concerns about the permanence of an international avant-garde fractured by the devastation of inter-European conflict. The opera, revived on important European stages during wartime, marked Strauss’s intentional retreat from the frontlines of serious modernism and into what he cheekily referred to in a 1916 letter to Hofmannsthal as “political-satirical-parodistic operetta,” a comedic world overrun by pageboys, clowns, and life’s abstract existential questions. As many scholars have noted, Strauss favored this strain for the remainder of his career, stating in 1916 that staging tragedies struck him “as something rather idiotic and childish” after the violence of World War.

I argue that the use of commedia dell’arte figures in this opera manifested the modernist interest in theater from centuries past, a preoccupation that defined the artistic output of the interwar period, but also the perils and benefits of stylistic mixing, thus engaging with contemporaneous dialogues concerning the tenuously coexisting forces of nationalism and internationalism. Despite receiving scathing criticism from contemporaries, Ariadne had an enduring international influence within the delicate political climate of the period, informing the deluge of commedia dell’arte-influenced works that emerged in the following decade such as Igor Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (1920) and Giacomo Puccini’s Turandot (1926).
Bitter Laughter and Sonic Subversion: Talkhak’s Clown Languages in Iranian Performance Melika Motevallipoor (Université de Montréal)
Biographys
Melika Motevallipoor is a doctoral student in Film Studies at Université de Montréal, specializing in feminist film theory, Iranian cinema, and intersections of performance, identity, and socio-cultural critique. As a filmmaker, screenwriter, and actor, Melika explores how traditional forms of performance intersect with contemporary cinematic practice, highlighting subversive voices and marginalized identities.

Her current research employs interdisciplinary methods, blending theoretical frameworks from philosophy, psychology, and sociology to investigate performative languages, gender identities, and cultural subversion within both historical and contemporary Middle Eastern contexts.
Abstract
This proposal examines Talkhak (تلخک), the archetypal Iranian court clown, as a master of subversive “clown language” and sonic expression in Persian performance traditions. Literally meaning “little bitter one,” the talkhak embodies a bitter wit using satire, ambiguous speech, and even nonsensical banter to critique authority under the guise of frivolity. Historically situated in settings from royal courts to folk theatre, the talkhak’s performances blended verbal and non-verbal antics (gestures, mimicry, slapstick) with sound and music to defy norms and convey hidden truths. Drawing on Paul Bouissac’s concept of the clown as a ritual transgressor who flouts social rules and McManus’s notion of “clown logic” as the art of contradicting conventional reason, this paper argues that Talkhak’s clowning was a culturally specific mode of dissent. The talkhak’s speech often relied on double entendres, crude humor and loodeh-bazi (buffoonery) that amused powerful patrons while smuggling in social critique. Equally significant is the sonic dimension: from playful vocal inflections to moments of feigned ignorance or strategic silence, Talkhak manipulated sound to disrupt communication norms. In the Qajar era, for example, the famed jester Karim Shīreh’i (dalkak of Nāser al-Dīn Shāh) was given license to openly mock courtiers; his lampooning songs and “sharp tongue” exposed corruption and even saved innocents from injustice. The talkhak tradition will be compared with other clown figures – such as the blackface siyāh of Iranian folk improv (ru-howzi or siah-bazi) who, as a “carnivalesque underdog,” mocks social superiors in vernacular music-filled skits, and the European court jester or Shakespearean fool with their licensed irreverence. Referencing theoretical frameworks (Bala’s clown-trickster archetype balancing silliness and seriousnes, Robb’s insights on clowns as political commentators, etc.), the talkhak is analyzed as a uniquely Persian incarnation of the clown-as-trickster. This study illuminates how Talkhak’s semiotic and acoustic strategies - his satirical words, performative silence, comic songs and noises - created a liminal language that both entertained and subverted. In doing so, it provided a cultural safety valve: a sonic world where critique could be voiced amid laughter, allowing a form of popular commentary to resonate within authoritarian contexts.
Playing with Tradition: A Clown’s Approach to Rehearsing Beijing Opera William Want (University of Oxford)
Biographys
William Want is a current Masters student in Musicology at the University of Oxford. They were a visiting student at Shanghai Theatre Academy. They hold an undergraduate degree in Music from the University of Cambridge, where they specialised in Jingju (Beijing Opera). In 2023, they trained as a huadan under Li Qiuping. Will’s research explores the aesthetic philosophy of Jingju performance. Their work has examined the affect of cuteness in the Xun-School Jingju, as well as musical mediations of Maoist-era memories through amateur performance, and the use of humour in Suzhou pingtan. Currently, their research focuses on the weird and uncanny onstage and online, as well as methods of comedy in traditional Chinese performing arts in the modern day. They were the co-founder and President of the Cambridge University Society for Ethnomusicology and remain active as a theatre director, musical director, clown, and designer.
Abstract
This presentation explores a intercultural meeting point between clowning and Jingju (Beijing Opera), China’s highly codified national dramatic form. While contemporary stagings of Jingju often experiment with new stories within a traditional aesthetic framework, few have reinterpreted canonical works through radically nontraditional means. This paper presents a practice-led case study of a controversial rehearsal process undertaken at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, in which I workshopped a clown-informed reinterpretation of the Jingju classic The Qilin Purse (锁麟囊).

Drawing on the techniques of Philippe Gaulier and John Wright, I introduced physical theatre games, non-hierarchical collaboration, le jeu, and an emphasis on complicity with the audience into a rehearsal room otherwise grounded in Jingju’s vertical authority structure and rigid interpretative codes. The work was also controversial for actors and teachers for the treatment of the huadan, the flirtatious, lower-class female role, as a clown figure. This reframing challenged prevailing aesthetics of beauty and feminine grace within the form. At one point, a performer remarked that her character was “too beautiful” to perform physical comedy and stated that even being ‘cute’ was ugly enough, illuminating deep-rooted conflicts between the aesthetic of failure that is key to clowning and the strongly codified physical conventions of Jingju performance.

This project marks the first time that a traditional Jingju work has been restaged through the lens of Western theatrical methods, especially clowning. Its rehearsal process was met with resistance from teachers and students alike, who objected to script edits, costume alterations, multiroling, musical reinterpretations, and the disruption of conventional blocking. However, this friction proved fertile ground for exploring how clowning’s marginality, irreverence, and failure can activate new readings of classical Chinese performance. This paper argues that clowning offers not only an alternative aesthetic lens, but a method of uncovering Jingju’s own embedded tensions around authorship, hierarchy, and gender. The frictions and fusions that emerged illuminate the risks and rewards of playing with tradition onstage, in rehearsal, and across cultural boundaries.
10:15 AM
Break
10:45 AM Panel : Clowns in Artistic Practice
10:45 AM
Clowning in The Circus Opera Company Casie Girvin et Steven Crino (Temple University)
Biographys
Casie Girvin is an interdisciplinary storyteller, singer, actor, acrobat, and clown. She is a co-founder and Artistic Director of The Circus Opera Company, a Philadelphia-based organization that synthesizes new classical movement and dynamic circus arts. She has performed with companies such as the Arden Theatre Company, Capital Repertory Theatre, Rough and Tumble Productions, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Albany Pro Musica, Maples Repertory Theatre, to list a few. Clown and physical theatre are inseparable parts of Casie’s creative process and approach to music. Her favorite roles include “Charlotte” in CHARLOTTE’S WEB, “John Webster” in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE, “Despina” in COSÌ FAN TUTTE, and “Edith” in SIX AUTUMNS ON THE HUDSON. Casie grew up as a competitive gymnast, and pivoted to circus arts in 2022 after training at The Actors Gymnasium Circus School. Following her studies there, Casie trained at the Pig Iron School through their summer session, focusing on Lecoq, clown, commedia dell'arte, and physical theatre. Casie has a private voice studio, and coaches gymnastics and circus arts. She has held faculty positions at The Circadium School of Contemporary Circus, and the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts (Head of Acrobatics.) Casie has a B.M. in Classical Vocal Performance from Temple University’s Boyer College of Music and Dance.
Abstract
The Circus Opera Company is a Philadelphia-based organization that synthesizes new classical music with dynamic circus arts. As a company, “Jeaux” (or “play”) is at the forefront of our creative process. The development of each new piece begins by simply playing in our circus studio space. This sometimes means playing on various aerial apparatuses, using props, improvising movement, sound, and interacting with the creative team that is present in the studio. In this presentation, we will discuss how clowning plays a role in the creation and performances of our works at The Circus Opera Company, using excerpts from three pieces that were performed in the past year. Each piece approaches clowning in a different way to match the theatrical premise and goal of the work. "Through Hoops" is a composition for soprano on aerial hoop. This piece features a made-up language or a “vocalise” in the classical tradition, and replaces the need for words with physical aerial gestures. "Acro Piano Duet" is an improvised piece that features one musician on a standard piano, and a clown playing “the big piano” (a la the movie "Big" featuring Tom Hanks) through acrobatic movements. Finally "The Tire Swing" is a circus opera featuring an 8-year-old girl character. The tradition of clowning was central in cultivating a movement vocabulary and demeanor for this character, who embodies “Jeaux” throughout the piece. By examining each of these pieces, we can see how clowning has the ability to influence the development and performance of our works, and continues to be a wealth of inspiration for our interdisciplinary projects at The Circus Opera Company.
Goofy red nose for yellow hair bows Jelena Susnick
Biographys
JELENA SUSNICK received her master's degree in conducting from the Belgrade Academy of Music. During her career, she led many orchestras and choirs, and is also awarded in pedagogy. Among the orchestras with which she performed are: Berlin Sinfonietta, Belgrade Philharmonic, Radio Television of Serbia Symphony Orchestra, Jeunesse Musicale Welt Orchestra from Berlin, Belgrade Music Academy Symphony Orchestra, and contemporary music ensemble "Slavko Osterc" Slovenia. She is the artistic director and conductor of the Pan-Slavic "Youth Super Choir and Orchestra". It cooperates with the Slovenian Chamber Music Theatre, the only theater specialized in modern operas in the region. As a conductor and author of musical stage plays and operas, she also conducted Ana Sokolović's "Wedding", which she performed in Slovenia, Serbia, Italy, Switzerland, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Finland. She made numerous recordings of compositions by contemporary composers. She has toured in Sweden, Denmark, Greece, Germany, France, Austria, Romania, Poland, Czechia, Vatican City, and all countries of the former Yugoslavia. She is also active as a writer for feminist and popular science magazines, as well as a librettist for musical stage works.
Abstract
This presentation could be a quick guide for art music performers inspired by centuries-old clown wisdom that, when "translated" into musicians' language, paves the way to liberation, beauty, and joy of performance. Let's call it "The Clown/ess' Secret (of performing)."

I am invoking Cha-u-Kao – the original clowness, the "Moulin Rouge" sensation, Toulouse-Lautrec's muse, with her silly yellow hair bow – for help.

She's come a long way from being an acrobat, contortionist, and dancer, cutting all those beards to reach the very top. Her name means "noise and chaos" (chahut). Her performances are the seeds of the sexual revolution, feminist liberation, the fight against ageism, and the erasure of class differences. I feel her struggle for unique artistic expression. As I wave my conductor's baton in front of the orchestra, I challenge traditional gender roles and become an advocate for personal autonomy. STILL!

I will show the emotional self-battles in which musicians and especially women conductors confront self-deprecation, self-censorship, and social norms just before going on stage.

How can clown philosophy ease our pain? What can we borrow and adopt in our performances from clowns? How did we so easily permit them to say what others aren't allowed to say? Why do we forgive them while they warn us about social injustices? Where did they get such power?

Like children, clowns love a fiasco. Human emotion Geiger counters, they transform our reality. Our laughter is a cathartic relief and gratitude that they stumbled and got embarrassed for us. That's why clowns have the deepest emotional connections with the audience.

Can clown postulates free us from the fear of fiasco and negative criticism and let us face the world and ourselves by interpreting the sacred composer's ideas?

As the orchestra waits for me to flap my wings and take them on another emotional journey, my conductor's discourse is deeply inspired by Cha-u-Kao and all the other clownsesses.

My presentation is also a performance in which, together with the audience, I will answer the question to everyone, including myself: is society ready to accept a hilarious clowness inside a serious female conductor?
12:00 AM
Lunch
01:30 PM Panel : The Subversive Potential of Clowns
Clownin’ in Blue: An Exploration of Jazz Absurdism Varun Chandrasekhar (Washington University)
Biographys
Varun's research, building on his history as a guitarist, focuses on the existential condition of the jazz musician. Heeding Sartre's mantra that "existence precedes essence," Varun wonders how starting with the complex, racially marked, urban reality of the jazz musician can guide our understanding of the music. In simpler terms, how does the fact that the jazz musician is thrown into the world influence our musical intuitions, and are these properties then theoretically quantifiable? Prior to coming to WashU, Varun finished a Bachelors in Jazz Performance at The Ohio State University and a Masters in Music Theory at the University of Minnesota studying with Kevin Turner and Sumanth Gopinath.
Abstract
Charles Mingus’s “The Clown” tells a story of a Clown who is only able to get audiences to laugh when he hurts himself. The tune ends when the Clown dies on stage, but the audience thinks it is part of his act. When analyzing the tune, Gabbard (2016) and Saul (2003) focus on the depth of the racial allegory of Mingus’s description of the jazz musician trapped in the jaws of the parasitic music industry. They read the tune as the story of the tragic downfall of the titular character. While this is surely an accurate reading of Mingus’s political critique, both recountings fail to discuss just how fundamentally odd the tune is. Through his use of circus music, the free-improvisation, and the voice-over narration, Mingus is critiquing jazz both within the tune and as a meta-level commentary about what jazz has become. In contrast, I read this as a form of musical absurdism, reading the piece as an example of what Martin Esslin (1961) terms “the theater of the absurd.”

By evoking the concept of the theater of the absurd, I am able to create links between Bakhtin’s (1965) view of the carnivalesque and Mingus’s character. Bakhtin argues that the historical clown initially served as a comic, but potent, critique of the rule of kings. However, as capitalism took hold, clownery became a debased art form. I read Bakhtin’s historicized clown as similar to Baraka’s (1999, 2010, and by extension Mingus’s) conception of the mythological “blues person,” whose musical critique was stolen through the mechanics of capitalism. Within this framework, I argue that Mingus’s discussion of the Clown is not tragic because the Clown dies, but rather because he cannot be a clown. If the Clown is symbolic of the jazz musician, then the jazz musician had beautiful colors inside their soul initially, the need for a commercializable audience is what killed the jazz musician’s act. Mingus argues that clownery is a powerful aesthetic that is debased by an audience that fails to understand its meaning. Through this, I argue that absurdism provides a useful framework for understanding works in the post-bop era.
Harlequin’s Echo: Vocal Disfigurement, Gender Play, and the Sonic Mask in Vana’s “Harlequin” Echo Davidson (University of Pittsburgh)
Biographys
Echo Davidson is a PhD student in musicology at the University of Pittsburgh. Their research focuses on voice, performance, and media at the intersection of queer and trans theory, disability studies, and sound studies. Echo’s current work examines how vocal distortion, theatrical excess, and digital aesthetics operate as forms of resistance, ambiguity, and desire in contemporary music and opera. Their broader interests include opera remediation, trans vocality, and the politics of musical materiality. Echo has presented at meetings of the American Musicological Society, the Scriabin Society of America, and Iowa Musicology Day. They are also active in graduate student organizing and pedagogy initiatives, and committed to fostering accessible and inclusive spaces for performance and scholarship.
Abstract
Vana’s 2021 track Harlequin stages a sonic masquerade, reviving the commedia dell’arte archetype as a genderfluid figure of vocal disfigurement, affective ambiguity, and digital self-fashioning. Through pitch distortion, vocal fragmentation, and looping refrains, Harlequin performs a sonic clowning that unsettles the boundary between expression and artifice. This presentation weaves together musical analysis and audiovisual performance, echoing the fractured voice of the clown it explores. Emerging in the wake of a pandemic-era explosion of DIY aesthetics, digital drag, and trans vocal experimentation, Harlequin channels the clown as an emblem of survival in the face of legibility fatigue, genre exhaustion, and the weaponization of visibility. The Harlequin figure has long been associated with ambiguity racialized, sexualized, and gendered (Bakhtin 1984; Storey 2003). Drawing on Nina Sun Eidsheim’s concept of the “sonic mask” (2019), I analyze Vana’s vocal production as a kind of disidentificatory drag (Muñoz 1999), enacting an audible refusal of normative intelligibility. The song’s layered vocal effects, including autotune, pitch-shift, and breathy vocal fry, create a destabilized sonic body that slips between registers, genders, and expressive modes. Carolyn Abbate’s idea of voice as “ventriloquized” (2001) is central here: Harlequin is always both speaking and spoken-through, always already mediated.

Vana’s clown is also situated in a digital performance ecology that evokes what Legacy Russell calls Glitch Feminism (2020): a tactical error, a deliberate misperformance of identity that resists binary legibility. The clown, like the glitch, is productive in its failure. Where conventional vocal performance might strive for clarity, power, or authenticity, Vana opts for errancy, noise, and breakdown, refusing the listener’s desire for emotional resolution or stable identity.

In an era of intensified platform surveillance, culture war backlash, and the commodification of queerness, Harlequin makes a case for ambiguity as both a political and erotic tactic. Its distortions do not only obscure. They seduce. Through teasing vocal timbres and defiant sensuality, Vana’s performance queers the desire for coherence, offering instead what José Esteban Muñoz calls a “queer utopian impulse," a longing encrypted in performance, not confession. Framed through performance studies, queer sound studies, and trans aesthetic theory, this project considers Harlequin as an experiment in what Fred Moten calls “nonperformance” (2003), a way of inhabiting form without reproducing its violence. In doing so, Vana joins a lineage of artists who clown not to entertain but to fracture, to flirt, to survive.
Grin and Bear It: Cinema of the Dark Clown Joshua Minsoon Kim
03:00 PM
Break
03:15 PM
Artistic performance Ian Power (University of Baltimore) et Clint McCallum (Stevenson University)
Biographys
Ian Power and Clint McCallum are composers, performers, and performance artists. Since their time at UC San Diego where they founded the performance trio 'Bodies' with Carolyn Chen in 2008, they have been pushing the limits of music, rhythm, and theater in their off-the-wall performances. Ian is Associate Professor of Arts Production & Management at the University of Baltimore, and has been commissioned by Wet Ink, the Bergamot Quartet, and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Clint is a Lecturer in English at Stevenson University, winner of the Staubach Fellowship from the Internationales Musikinstitut Darmstadt, and his opera ‘Paradise TBD’ was premiered by Project [Blank] in San Diego in 2023.
Abstract
Ian Power and Clint McCallum present 'A Soul? A Desire?,' a variety show performance that explores clowning in music and theater. Over five vignettes, two characters spasm, shout, and vogue, looking for approval in all the wrong places. Like the classic clown, the characters navigate an excess of symbols and referents, committing to an alien performance for a very human audience. They try to solve the absurdity of their lives with their clowning, but tragically, through their flailing, only place their audience at further and further remove.

The show has monks invoking disco lyrics in an ancient, ambient, droney ceremony; a (loud) mime show of tightly synchronized sequences of physical gestures and vocal utterances; an ultimately over-stylized protest march that travels through the audience; and a live-action news report about mummies who come to life, unable to speak, only able to embalm themselves and gutturally beg for an exception to the laws of mortality. Subverting traditional theatricality, these characters in the show cycle through every form of address imaginable, nonetheless ending up hopelessly unable to communicate.

In addition to original compositions, this performance includes resurrections of pieces by Ed Harkins and Phil Larson (aka [THE]), professors of music at UC San Diego from the 1970s - 2000s. [THE]’s ecstatically bizarre performance practice seemed to mock the pompousness of the musical academy while simultaneously celebrating the creative freedom it could allow. The inclusion of this work seeks to both extend the initial intervention of Harkins and Larson and to underline a history of clowning in the American academic avant-garde. And yet, this history mirrors the tragic predicament of the two performers, always already out of place despite themselves.

Virtuosic in its execution and gonzo in its symbology, A Soul? A Desire? challenges audiences to be at peace with themselves, if the characters cannot. The show was premiered in Baltimore and Los Angeles, and will be featured on the Music For Your Inbox experimental video series in July 2025.
04:00 PM
Conférence keynote (Dinko Fabris (Università della Basilicata) et Mariella Pandolfi, répondante)
05:00 PM
Vin d’honneur
Saturday 7 February 2026 Overview: 9:00 AM workshop · 10:30 AM break · 10:45 AM workshop · 11:45 AM lunch · 1:15 PM roundtable · 2:30 PM panel
09:00 AM
Workshop Opéra 101 (Rigoletta)
10:30 AM
Break
10:45 AM
Workshopon Clown(s) Émilie Fortin (Duo ék) and Hélène Picard
Biography
Hélène Picard est une artiste lyrique d’une grande curiosité. Elle a complété un diplôme d’art vocal au sein du chœur d’adultes de la Maîtrise de Notre-Dame de Paris avant de venir étudier à l’Université de Montréal, d’abord en maîtrise puis en doctorat (obtenu en mars 2023). Elle est également titulaire d’une licence de Lettres Modernes (parcours Cinéma) et d’une licence de Musique (parcours Dramaturgie).

La pratique artistique d’Émilie Fortin déborde volontairement du cadre instrumental. Trompettiste, elle travaille à la friction des disciplines, met le corps au premier plan et nourrit ses collaborations par ses formations en mime corporel, clown et théâtre.
Abstract
Cet atelier d'une durée de 1h, animé par Émilie Fortin du Duo ék et Hélène Picard, initie les jeunes à l’univers expressif de l’opéra Clown(s) d’Ana Sokolović. À partir de l’écoute de la trompette et de la voix, soit une partie de l'instrumentation de l'œuvre, les participant.es acquerront une meilleure compréhension de l’art opératique et du parcours de la compositrice Iels seront par la suite appellés.es à expérimenter deux scènes de l’opéra en explorant le langage vocal d'Ana et le mime sonore, une approche corporelle qui stimule l’imagination en combinant musique et geste. De plus, des discussions guidées jalonneront l’atelier pour réfléchir ensemble aux thèmes abordés: les peurs, la découverte de soi et la transformation.
11:45 AM
Lunch
01:15 PM
Roundtable Symphonic Music Hits The Circus Représentant·es du spectacle Stellaire, de la compagnie DynamO Théâtre et Ana Sokolović Representatives of the show Stellaire, by the DynamO Théâtre company and Ana Sokolović
02:30 PM
Clowns and brass instruments
Send in the Gladiators: Fučík’s March into the Big Top James Deaville (Carleton University)
Biography
James Deaville teaches Music at Carleton University. One of his primary areas of interest is music and sound in various aspects of audiovisual media. He co-edited the Oxford Handbook of Music and Advertising (2021), and is currently co-editing the Oxford Handbook of Music and Television (2026). He has a chapter on music of Austrian emigres at London's Austrian Centre during World War 2, in the forthcoming Routledge volume on music and antifascism edited by Allyson Rogers, James Wright, and Daniel Ondrej. With Michael Baumgartner and Maria Behrendt he is now co-editing a collection of essays on music and moving images produced under the Third Reich, also for Routledge.
Abstract
When Julius Fučík composed his march “Entrance of the Gladiators” in 1897, he could not have imagined the global popularity and influence it would enjoy in the following century. He was one of the most popular Czech composers of his time (Lavengood 2019), with a prodigious output of over 400 polkas, waltzes, and marches, yet today he is all-but forgotten (Suppan 2006), remembered only for that one composition. Despite the march’s importance for popular culture (Peaslee 2025), musical scholarship has yet to study its path from the milieu of 19th-century Austro-Hungarian military music to a piece synonymous with the world of the circus and, more specifically, clowns. This paper attempts to construct a history for the “Entrance of the Gladiators” march in its cultural contexts. Fučík wrote it in part to demonstrate the new chromatic versatility of brass instruments, initially calling the piece a “Grande Marche chromatique: Triumph-Marsch” because of the omnipresent melodic half-steps (Janz 2021). He subsequently renamed it “Vjezd gladiátorů” (“Entrance of the Gladiators”) due to his personal interest in Roman history (Burns 2021). Then entered Canadian composer Louis-Philippe Laurendeau, who arranged the work for smaller wind band and published it in 1901 with Carl Fischer under the title “Thunder and Blazes.” Given the publisher’s reach, it was this version as a fast-tempo “screamer” a rousing energetic march that became enormously popular for the circus. Although we cannot trace a clear path for the work’s evolution from military march to circus music, considering the “Entrance” through the lenses of musical semiotics and adaptation theory assists us in understanding this musical transformation. As Philip Tagg has argued, musical meaning is not fixed but socially constructed (Tagg 1999), and thus a composition can be re-semiotized in a different context. The musical re-semiotization is an act of adaptation, which for Linda Hutcheon involves “repetition without replication” (Hutcheon 2006, 7). In this process of adaptation, Fučík’s triumphal military march was re-signified to represent comical spectacle, and the chromatics that once demonstrated brass capabilities came to symbolize the comedic chaos of circus clowns, a rare instance of a chromatic tune entering the canon.
Symphony in Q Flat: Clown Bands and their Mockery of American Popular Music at the Turn of the Twentieth Century Jane Cohen (Florida State University)
Biography
Jane Cohen is a fourth-year undergraduate student at Florida State University pursuing a double major in music and history with a minor in museum studies. Her research focuses on American popular culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with particular interests in music and circuses. Through studies of newspapers, magazines, and archival documents, she hopes to shed light on the everyday lives of people in the past. Jane is currently completing her Honors in the Major thesis entitled “On and Off the Bandwagon: Careers, Repertoire, and Societal Expectations of Turn of the Century American Circus Bands,” which will be completed in the fall of 2025. She has previously presented at Florida State University and the University of South Florida, and her work will be published in an upcoming issue of Circus Fanfare magazine. After graduation, Jane plans to pursue graduate studies in musicology or history.
Abstract
In April 1897, Spader Johnson took to the ring of the Ringling Brothers’ World’s Greatest Show in Chicago. Baton in one hand, cornet in the other, the principal clown led his band of fellow funny makers in a performance that transformed the sound world of the circus with a shocking burlesque of one of America’s most prominent forms of musical entertainment, the brass band, and its most famous bandleader, John Philip Sousa. Enormously popular with audiences, this routine was quickly copied, and “Soo-See” bands became popular clown routines in circuses and circus parades across the United States. What made these bands so popular, and why was Sousa such a subject of parody? This study focuses on clown bands that performed in circuses at the turn of the twentieth century and analyzes how and why they mocked the existing musical culture of the day. Using photographs, sheet music, and newspaper reports, as well as circus posters, programs, and route books, I investigate the origin of the first clown bands, and how they responded to the musical world around them. To some extent, the phenomenon of clown bands was triggered by the increasing size of circus tents, which rendered the earlier tradition of singing clowns impractical. However, I also argue that the creation of clown bands in the late 1890s was a timely reaction to the rising popularity of brass bands across America, both as community groups and as professional, touring ensembles. Clown bands lampooned the growing professionalization and snobbery of the American music scene in the late nineteenth century, but their choice to mock Sousa in particular also poked fun at a national celebrity whose touring troupe and elaborate stage persona had many commonalities with the circus. The tradition of clown bands has continued to the present day, in both professional and amateur forms, but within a decade of Spader Johnson’s first performance, they had lost their direct connection to popular culture and became instead a generic comedic trope.
0330 PM
Lecture-recital Humor in Tones [Arlo Banta (University of Michigan) et Jacob Kerzner (Syracuse University)]
Biography
Jacob Kerzner is an Assistant Professor of Drama at Syracuse University, where he teaches song performance and musical theater history. Jacob is also the Associate Editor for the Gershwin Critical Edition, where he is editing La, La, Lucille (1919), Song of the Flame (1925), and Of Thee I Sing (1931). Jacob studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland and has worked on the 2019 Broadway revival of Oklahoma!, Hadestown, and Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Pipe Dream. Arlo Banta is a PhD candidate in historical musicology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His dissertation research focuses on gender, sexuality, and race in American musical theatre. They hold a BA in music and theatre from Muhlenberg College, with respective concentrations in vocal performance and acting/performance studies. Arlo also works for the Gershwin Initiative as an editorial assistant and for the Inclusive History Project as a research assistant. https://arlojbanta.wixsite.com/mysite
Abstract
Sgt. Irving Berlin performed his hit song “Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning” in the 1918 revue Yip, Yip, Yaphank, a show written for soldiers to perform at their army base. Berlin was already a celebrity songwriter and had sung on major vaudeville stages, but “Oh, How I Hate…” was, as he called it, “a protest written from the heart out.” From behind the mask of a comedy song, Berlin could be more critical than the average soldier. Satirizing current events was common for Tin Pan Alley composers like Berlin. This lecture recital takes their jokes seriously to show that musical theatre clownery constituted subversive sociopolitical critique during national crises like World War I and the Great Depression. Other writers soon capitalized on American audiences’ appetite for political critique. After the stock market crashes that led to the Great Depression, George S. Kaufman, Morrie Ryskind, and lyricist-composer duo Ira and George Gershwin wrote Of Thee I Sing in 1931, which became the first musical to win the Pulitzer Prize. The radical values encoded in the show’s catchy tunes escaped the censors, but not audiences New York Times theater critic Brooks Atkinson said the show “attacks with the rapier and the club indiscriminately....It is funnier than the government, and not nearly so dangerous.” Further, lyricist-activist Yip Harburg’s anti-war musical Hooray for What! (1937) with music by Harold Arlen foreshadowed the approach of World War II. Our thirty minute lecture-recital consists of three tunes from these pivotal shows Berlin’s “Oh, How I Hate…,” the Gershwins’ “Senatorial Roll Call,” and Harburg and Arlen’s “God’s Country.” These Jewish-American songwriters’ works make clear the subversive power of the comedy song, a device whose layers become especially apparent in live performance. Our performance and analysis argues that these satirical tunes gave their creators and performers a chance to speak out about the state of the country using a populist musical language that shaped the future of political comedy.
04:00 PM
Break
04:15 PM
Closing Plenary Jelena Novak (Universidad NOVA de Lisboa)
07:30 PM
Stellaire Orchestre symphonique de Montréal”
Abstract
En route pour un voyage au milieu des étoiles où les arts du cirque jonglent habilement avec la multitude de sonorités du Grand Orgue Pierre-Béique. Découvrez ce spectacle inédit au son des musiques de Philip Glass et de la spectaculaire Suite Interstellar de Hans Zimmer. Ouvrez grand vos yeux et vos oreilles!